35thstreetswarm

QUOTE (Quin @ Jan 19, 2018 -> 06:18 PM) Thirded. Surprised at all the sleeveless love -- those always gave me an uncontrollable urge to hop the fence and jump a first base coach. To each his own

As the cold stove has shown no signs of heating, I have turned my thoughts to more frivolous baseball-related topics, like uniforms (a favorite of mine). I think it would be worth considering a uniform redesign in the coming years. The Sox are due for one. And especially if the Sox are poised for a renaissance: I've also always liked it when a team decides to do a little rebranding to coincide with a big upswing, ala the 2000s-era Miami Heat. I've also always thought the Sox did not take sufficient advantage of the "White" in "White Sox," or the fact that the franchise owns one of the coolest color combos in baseball: white and black. I've also never loved the Yankees-knockoff pinstripe look. With all that in mind, what about a super crisp white-on-white home uniform? The Nike redesigns of Vanderbilt are a good template, though I'm imagining even more white, like black-outlined white lettering and a super-simplified, almost Penn State football look that emphasizes the "white." https://news.nike.com/news/baseball-vapor-elite-uniform Another possibility would be to pair that with a black-on-black away uniform, ala Mississippi State/Louisville. White/Black. If too gimmicky, though, we could stick with the usual black alternates as aways, maybe with some tweaks. I think the hat stays untouched, though. Thoughts?

QUOTE (steveno89 @ Dec 5, 2017 -> 08:14 AM) Madrigal seems to be underrated due to his size, but the guy can hit. Madrigal seems like the kind of player who could make a lot of teams look silly for not picking him earlier.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 29, 2017 -> 04:06 PM) I think 2019 is our "2015 Cubs" year. They spent some money that year on Lester, basically everyone was called up or arriving, and they wound up being a wild card team because Bryant did a lot of damage and Arrieta broke out as a cy young. 2019 we're not all the way there yet, but the core is up and we should be thinking about putting ourselves in a position where the 2020 offseason we fill the last holes. ...or our 2015 Astros year -- another playoff team. Again, please feel free to stop me from elevating my expectations.

QUOTE (steveno89 @ Nov 29, 2017 -> 03:07 PM) 2019 was always a best case scenario, and I think fans are ready to accept that 2018 and 2019 are rebuilding years...with the focus being on 2020 onwards. It would not be impossible to be a significantly improved team by 2019 if our young talent steps up though. I agree it would not be impossible, and in fact am finding it harder and harder to understand why it's obvious that 2019 will be a true rebuilding year. Help me out with the timetable here--because I want to believe 2020 is the year to circle on my calendar if for no other reason than to protect my psyche from disappointment. The cornerstones of our rebuild are the top assets acquired in the Sale/Eaton/Q trades plus Robert (and maybe Hansen), right? (I know there are other quality prospects, but that's the top tier.) Well, three of those guys are already up. Two (Kopech and Jimenez) seem likely to be up by next year, no matter what the brass says about Eloy. Hell, even Hansen could find his way up next year. That could leave Robert as the only high-profile prospect who won't be up in 2018, let alone 2019. Why exactly is the 2019 team supposed to struggle, especially if Abreu and Garcia stick around and produce? Is the assumption that team will struggle for multiple big league seasons while the full contingent of youngsters suffer through growing pains? I guess that's possible, though it's not really how I've seen it work with other recent rebuilds. The Cubs, for example, were off and running once Bryant and Russell arrived.

As with the Cubs in November 2016, it now seems to be accepted wisdom on sports talk radio that nobody can realistically hope to compete with the Astros for the next 3, 4, 5 seasons. After all, they just won the World Series, and will bring back basically the same team. Pencil them in, since that's how it always works in baseball.

QUOTE (FloydBannister1983 @ Oct 31, 2017 -> 07:12 PM) Chicago itself is not an entry level job but managing the White Sox is. Why? ESPN can't remember they exist. They routinely have one of the lowest television ratings in the league. Every manager they've hired in the last 40 years has had no managing experience, except for the current guy who had a cup of coffee with the organization on the north side until a top tier manager became available. They are a small market team in the third largest market in the country. This is why managing the White Sox is an entry level position, for starters. But if you want to ignore all of history then I concede that Joe Girardi or Dusty Baker or Tony LaRussa or Joe Torre or Bob Brenley or any other top tier manager could end up here. I hope for your sake you get your wish. As far as 2, 3, 4 titles goes ... They've been to the postseason 5 times in the last 50 years and have advanced one single season. I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm but I'd wait for the crown jewel of your rebuild to average his weight before you have them winning four titles. There also aren't all that many super-experienced "high profile managers" hopping from big market team to big market team in baseball, and hiring managers from within - or managers with little to no experience - is pretty common among teams of all types. Joe Girardi wasn't that high profile or experienced when the Yankees hired him, and it wasn't for lack of organizational status. See also the Dodgers' hire of Dave Roberts, and many other examples. Judging the attractiveness of a team as a destination by its "success" or "failure" in hiring Dusty Baker types doesn't really make sense.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Oct 26, 2017 -> 11:33 AM) Disgraceful? The Cubs won the World Series with Maddon. Do you think they would do anything differently? I have nothing against Renteria. But questions about what he "deserves" --or whether he committed any fireable offenses this season--are misplaced. I suppose Tim Anderson didn't do anything to "deserve" losing the starting SS job for the Chicago White Sox in a vacuum, but if Francisco Lindor fell into our lap through some miracle -- peace out, Tim. If you think there's a manager that puts you in a better position to win than Renteria does, it's worth looking at replacing Renteria if financial and other considerations line up. I think Girardi's body of work is superior to Renteria's. I'd be excited if the Sox hired him.

QUOTE (KagakuOtoko @ Oct 22, 2017 -> 09:52 AM) This will be a pretty good world series, like one of the first ones I've been excited about for a while. You have two of the best going at it and it should be a heavyweight type fight. Ultimately, I see the Dodgers winning this series due to their bullpen and pitching. As much as I like Keuchel, Verlander, and (McCullers, Peacock, Morton), I like Kershaw, Hill, Darvish, and Wood a lot better. As for the bullpens, it's really not a contest. Dodgers bullpen is lights out, just ask the cubs. I think the Dodgers win this series in 6 games or less. I could see the Astros roughing up Wood and Darvish in their two Houston games, but Kershaw and Hill will probably be too much for the Astros hitters. I see the Keuchel and Verlander starts going deep with a low score but their bullpen will ultimately let them down. This is the matchup I've been rooting for all season. Dodgers are my (distant) secondary team because of my time spent in California in my youth, and I like them even more for ending the Cub nightmare that consumed my neighborhood for the past year, so go Dodgers. I think they have had the magic all season (save for that little spell) and will ride it to the end.

QUOTE (Quin @ Oct 20, 2017 -> 02:31 PM) To be fair, if they have Torres they likely don't have a ring. I don't disagree. Just crazy to think they could potentially have those two prospects to add to the current group - that would be something.

QUOTE (Nokona @ Oct 20, 2017 -> 12:12 PM) I can't believe half of these fans are in the "well at least we made it this far!" camp To me, the shine really came off this team. Schwarber, bust. Russell, average. Baez, average bat ++ defense. Lester, the end is nigh. Hendricks, took 4 months to get his velocity back. Playing Happ in CF is a joke. And Bryant didn't play well at all. Yes, it would be really nice for them if they had Gleyber Torres and Eloy coming up through their system to fill some of these holes.

QUOTE (Sox-35th @ Oct 20, 2017 -> 08:33 AM) Admit it. You cheer for the laundry. Proudly. We all do.

I have to say, I just don't get some Sox fans' impulse to defend Jose Quintana's honor endlessly -- on these boards, to their Cub fan friends, etc. I don't begrudge anyone their attachment to certain players, but it's just not how I look at the sports world, so I find it fascinating. I root for teams, not players. Maybe I'd make an exception for a true White Sox legend who plays a short stint for another team at the end of his career (ala Frank Thomas), but when a player's not on the Sox anymore, they're gone to me. Especially when they go to a team I don't like. Q plays for the Cubs now. I can't stand the Cubs. I hope the world looks back on the trade as an absolute fleecing by Hahn.

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Oct 19, 2017 -> 11:08 AM) While the cub pen without Davis is not pretty, the guys out there have experience so you roll with it and hope for the best. Also every one of the Dodgers pitchers can be hit hard. While Kershaw is an ace, the playoffs do not reflect this as much as you would think. Hill and Darvish are nice pitchers but by no means do they have a history of dominating a team. The cubs need to hit, if they do not it's over tonight. They have pieces to plug in and roll with, the Dodgers do not. You are relying on Bryant and Rizzo to hit not Granderson and Utley. I like Quintana/Lester/Hendricks over Kershaw/Hill/Darvish in a best of three. Problem is, cubs need a sweep. They have shown resiliency in the past. The issue tonight, Quintana can be pitching well and still not get out of the 6th inning......they can go to Lester for a couple tonight and even to close the game then he can still go Saturday. A cub win tonight and all bets are off. Last night didn't surprise me, as it was always going to be a favorable pitching matchup for the Cubs and Roberts trotted out an awful lineup for the Dodgers. Tonight things massively favor the Dodgers. In that sense, I think if the Cubs win anyway momentum and Dodger choke-itude become factors.

What a different vibe this year. I live near Wrigley and the buzz of last year has been gone for months -- it's been so much more subdued than last year, even when things were going well for the Cubs. Even these threads, full of Cubs haters, seem dead with the Cubs on the brink of elimination. I obviously knew the first WS win in 108 years would be a once-in-a-lifetime level of hype, but I didn't expect this much of a drop-off. It's like a fever broke for everyone when they won it. There was a school of thought last year that Sox fans should want the Cubs to finally win it already to kill the hype machine, and become "just another team." I despised that logic at the time. But maybe there was some truth to it, because this year has been so much more bearable.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Oct 11, 2017 -> 11:03 AM) I think I prefer a sick and/or pissed off Strasburg over Roark. Hopefully he dominates for 8 innings and they save Scherzer for relief of Gio in game 5.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Oct 11, 2017 -> 10:57 AM) Yessss. Part of me feels like this is the worst case scenario. Sick and/or pissed off Strasburg, under maximum pressure, and the whole thing is surrounded by an air of impending doom.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 11, 2017 -> 09:35 AM) The Rizzo and Dusty clown show is something to behold It sure is. Oh well, wait and see I suppose: the final story of this bizarre episode will really be written on the field today. All signs point to Roark getting lit up, a Cubs W, a trashed reputation for Strasburg and Dusty, etc. But then baseball's a weird game.

QUOTE (whitesoxjr27 @ Oct 11, 2017 -> 09:26 AM) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/nationa...m=.63fab1f2a7cf Man, I would hate to be a Nationals fan.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 2, 2017 -> 09:32 AM) Now that the 2017 season is over, and we saw 162 games played at the major league level played, a lot of players traded away as well as brought into the organization... what are you going to take from the 2017 season as a White Sox fan? Player- and team-specific baseball matters aside, I learned that a full-fledged rebuild is not nearly as painful as I expected. I can't believe "the bad season" is already over, and it wasn't even bad. Sick as it sounds, I may have enjoyed this season more than any since 08 because of the constant action on the prospect front, and the abundance of hope for the future.

QUOTE (JUSTgottaBELIEVE @ Jul 19, 2017 -> 01:49 PM) The funny thing is, depending upon how you define superstar, the White Sox kind of already had that prior to this season between Eaton, Abreu, Sale, Q and now Avi this year. I'm not saying at this point I disagree with the rebuild approach but just find it ironic that the best case scenario for this rebuild is to find a new group of core players (which is a risk when referring to prospects) when we had already established this type of core group locked up for multiple seasons yet still couldn't manage to win more than 78 games. I'm fully on board with the rebuild, but this is the kind of thought that keeps me up at night. Before our prospects can build our team up, we have to exhaust a few to fill the holes left by guys we traded just to get back to square one. If our new crop of pitching prospects led to, say, a Kopech becoming Chris Sale, and a Giolito becoming Q, that would seem like a reasonably good scenario. But that kind of gets us nowhere, no? Ultimately, I have faith that the depth of positional prospects we now have in place, plus a couple high draft picks, will be enough to move us forward. And there was no realistic alternative to a rebuild. But it's still a scary leap.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jul 18, 2017 -> 07:33 AM) They do compete for some fans though. When the Sox rating and season ticket base skyrocketed in 2005 and 2006, do you think those were all hardcore Sox fans? I doubt it, I guarantee a lot of these new arrivals are decked in head to toe Cubs gear today. And the fans they don't share are what can help create the rivalry. You might not give the Cubs much thought, but a lot of other fans do, as this board shows. When you have two teams living in such proximity, a rivalry just creates itself, when there is so much interaction between fans. It's a different type of rivalry than a divisional one, but it's definitely there. (And this has nothing to do with the trade, I fully support it, just arguing semantics ) This is by far my least favorite "debate" in Chicago sports. The Cubs and Sox are rivals in the same way that other teams that simultaneously play in the same sports league and city have been rivals since the beginning of time. It's been written into songs, and into the mythology of the city. Saying you don't care about the other team -- or that you don't notice them, or that they are insignificant to you -- doesn't change this self-evident fact. It's usually just a passive-aggressive way of putting the other team down. Cub fans in particular have favored this approach over the years. But regardless whether you punch your brother in the face, or give him the silent treatment instead, he's still going to be there.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Jul 14, 2017 -> 02:31 PM) Middling implies middle of the pack, their farm system might be bottom 5 in the league now. I was trying to be nice. I hate to kick a team when they're down.

...and just like that, the Chicago Cubs are a losing team with a middling farm system.

QUOTE (whitesoxjr27 @ Nov 2, 2016 -> 04:13 PM) Since HR send out a broadcast message about wearing cub gear Thursday for the victory tonight. Should i wear my 2005 Sox stuff if the cubs lose? Or is that too much? haha My 9-year-old son insisted on wearing his Konerko jersey and Sox hat for his school's "Cub day." It was one of my prouder moments as a father.